BOA Blog

[caption id="attachment_1446" align="alignleft" width="133" caption="Michael Waters' Gospel Night "][/caption] Matthew Guenette of the Southern Indiana Review's "First Takes with Matthew Guenette" asks himself "What is in the work of a title?" After reading Waters' tenth collection of poems, Guenette finds the poet's ability to provoke tension from diction something worth turning over and over again while considering both words of the title. The "work of this title," as Guenette writes, conclusively demonstrates the mastery of word choice and form to be found in each poem of the collection. Guenette sees the four sections of Gospel Night as individual guides for...

[caption id="attachment_1442" align="alignleft" width="195" caption="BOA staff members Albert Abonado, Melissa Hall and Peter Conners"][/caption] Today's CITY Newspaper article concerning the upcoming BOA event-- the Dine & Rhyme on Sunday September 18th -- is not simply a flyer or advertisement, but a reminder of BOA's legacy and the  higher importance of Poetry. Thank you to CITY for sharing the news about BOA, past, present and future. The CITY Article with the wonderful BOA history can be found here. This year's Dine & Rhyme is specially themed in honor of our 35th anniversary.  The event will start at 3PM with a poetry...

Adam McOmber, BOA poet NewPages Book Reviews had high words for Adam McOmber's most recent short story collection, This New and Poisonous Air, which blends historical fiction with fantasy and the macabre. NewPages critic, Patricia Contino praises McOmber's eye for detail as well as his sense of storytelling, stating that "every page has a paragraph or more worth savoring." However, "McOmber's gift for detail never infringes on the narrative." Stories such as "Fall, Orpheum" - in which "a small town movie palace becomes the temple for an entire town’s devotion and sacrifice" - not only exemplify McOmber's sense of narrative...

Blogger Jessica Varin over at Rattle, much like BOA Poet Barbara Jane Reyes, traces her heritage from several cultures. On what kind of person she would be or how it would feel if she were able to fully share all of those cultures, Varin writes "I don't know the answers to these questions. I could spend a lifetime speculating: instead, I have chosen to create a new culture for people like me. There is no instruction manual, so I look to the creative work of those who stand at the intersect of two cultures." Barbara Jane Reyes' Diwata is her...

It's been a long while since we've done any blog entries on some of BOA's classics, so today we're going to bring you back to Anthony Tognazzini's collection of short stories, I Carry A Hammer In My Pocket For Occasions Such As These, BOA's first collection of short fiction, published in 2007, and still an undeniably keen new voice in the form. Smart and innovative, Hammer is a refreshingly quirky read and is at one time abstract and yet completely relevant. Tognazzini deals with life, relationships, the mundane and the cosmic, often all at once. His stories remind one of...